Chapter Twenty-Three
“Please spell your name, sir.”
“M-I-R-E-K, P-A-V-L-O-V-I-C-H.”
“And am I correct, Dr. Pavlovich…”
“It’s pronounced Pav-LO-vish, not PAV-lo-vick, please.”
“Of course, I’m sorry. Dr. PavLOvich, am I correct that you have both an M.D. degree and a Ph.D.?”
“Yes, that is correct.”
“Can you give us a little bit more of your background?”
“I was trained at Comenius University and the Cancer Research Institute at Slovak Academy of Sciences in Bratislava, Czechoslovakia. I joined the National Cancer Institute in 1980 as an American Cancer Society fellow and remained as a visiting associate, visiting scientist and senior investigator at the Laboratory of Tumor Cell Biology until 1989. I then….”
Pavlovich’s English is perfect, and his Slovakian accent minimal. But Messick knows this list could go on forever, so he cuts him short.
“Dr. Pavlovich, thank you. That’s very impressive. Specifically, where were you working in 1983?”
“Let’s see…in the Laboratory of Tumor Cell Research at the National Cancer Institute in Bethesda, Maryland.”
“So you worked with Dr. Gallo?”
“No, sir. I worked for Dr. Gallo. No one works with Dr. Gallo.”
There’s a snicker throughout the courtroom. A few heads could also be seen nodding in silent agreement. Finally, someone had said it like it is.
“Let me get right to the point of why you are a witness. You were familiar at that time with a particular T-cell culture called HUT78.”
“Quite familiar, yes. I was using it to grow HIV in our lab.”
“Was it easy to get this HUT78?”
“Yes, it was. You could get it directly from Dr. Adi Gazdar, who developed it, or from the ATCC, for example.”
Messick decides it’s not really that important for the jury know who Dr. Gazdar is or what the ATCC is.
“Was it expensive?”
“No. $80 to $100. That’s all.”
“And was it a popular culture?”
“Yes, I would say so. A lot of labs were using it for various experiments.”
“Was there anything particularly special about this HUT78 in 1983?”
“No, except that it was about the only culture that would support the growth of the AIDS virus.”
“When you say 'AIDS virus', you are referring to...”
“It was called by different names at that time. But basically, it was HIV.”
“And the term, LAV?”
“You certainly better not call it LAV in our lab, not in 1983.”
“Why not? They were identical, weren't they – different names for the same virus?”
“Dr. Gallo called it HTLV-3, and you better call it that, too. There was even a government directive in 1984 saying that the virus that caused AIDS would be called HTLV-3, and any reference to the LAV virus was forbidden.”
“Even though the virus was, in fact, LAV, shipped over to you from France?”
“You would have lost your job, Mr. Messick.”
This is going better than I had anticipated, Messick thinks. He looks back at his notes.
“Okay. So you had easy access to HUT78.”
“Anybody did.”
“So it wasn't that the LAV, sorry, HTLV-3 virus needed some very special culture to grow...the culture was pretty common?”
“That's true.”
“Tell us about H9.”
“H9 is another T-cell culture.”
Messick looks up with surprise. Pavlovich had fallen into his trap so easily.
“What do you mean ‘another’ culture? Hasn't the H9 culture been proven to be identical to HUT78?”
Pavlovich seems to wince a little, realizing what had just happened and that Messick knew more than he thought he did. His answer is slow in coming.
“Yes.”
“Do you want to tell the court how this happened?”
“Well, I mistakenly thought I had created a new T-cell culture, and I called it H9.”
“What do you mean, 'mistakenly'?”
“I mean that apparently I had taken some HUT78 without realizing it, cloned it, and thought I had created a new line. We called it H9.”
“But it was really HUT78.”
“Yes.”
“Basically, you just renamed the HUT78 culture as ‘H9’?”
“Yes.”
Messick looks at the jury. Please, please get this next part…
“When you said ‘we called it H9,’ who did you mean by ‘we’?"
“Dr. Gallo and I.”
“So Dr. Gallo knew all about this little 'mistake' of yours?”
“Yes, I told him.”
“Didn't this mistake get compounded?”
“How do you mean?”
“Didn't the word get out somehow that the only culture that would grow the AIDS virus was ‘H9’ and not ‘HUT78’ – even though they were identical?”
“Yes, I think that did actually happen.”
A quick glance at the jury. Good. It looks like I didn’t lose anybody. Now, stay with me some more…
“What was the result of this little piece of misinformation?”
“I'm not sure I follow.”
“For example, if someone wanted to test Dr. Gallo's contention that his HTLV-3 virus caused AIDS, and they wanted to grow the virus in their own lab according to Koch's Postulate Number Two so they could do Postulates Number Three and Four, what did they have to do, now that it was believed that only the H9 culture would work?”
“They would have to acquire some H9 culture, of course.”
“And where could they get this H9 culture? Was it readily available from lots of sources, like the ATCC?”
“No.”
Pavlovich is obviously not very pleased that Messick is taking him down this road.
“So where would someone get it?”
“From our lab.”
“Only from your lab?”
“Yes. We were the only ones that had it.”
“Dr. Pavlovich, if a request came in to send H9 to the Stanford University Medical Research Center, for example, would you just ship it right off?”
“No.”
“No? Why not?”
“The request had to be approved.”
Pavlovich looks resigned to the fact that he’s finally been caught, after thirty years. Well, may as well tell the whole story, then, he decides. Too late to try to keep hiding it. He looks at Dr. Gallo sitting at the defense table and kind of shrugs his shoulders, as if to say that he’s sorry, but there’s nothing else he can do.
“Approved by whom?”
Pavlovich looks back to Messick, ready to get it all out in the open.
“By Dr. Gallo.”
“Oh. Now I see. In order to test Dr. Gallo's theory that his HTLV-3 virus caused AIDS, his peers had to come to him to get the only culture they were told that would grow it. Is that correct?”
“Yes.”
“Did Dr. Gallo grant these requests for H9 very often?”
“No.”
“Who did he agree to send the H9 culture to?”
“A few top researchers.”
“A few top researchers? Or do you mean a few top friends that he could control?”
“Objection. Leading and argumentative.”
“Sustained.”
“I'll withdraw the question. Dr. Pavlovich, you said HUT78 was readily available, yes?”
“Yes.”
“Anyone could get HUT78 and try to grow the AIDS virus for themselves and see if it met Koch's Postulate Number Two.”
“Yes.”
“But if you believed that you needed a special culture called H9, you wouldn’t waste your time trying to test Dr. Gallo’s claim that HIV caused AIDS until you got some of this H9 culture, would you?”
“I suppose not.”
“And to get this so-called special H9 culture, your req
uest had to be approved by Dr. Gallo, correct?”
“Yes.”
Now Messick’s ready to pull it all together for the jury.
“Dr. Pavlovich, if you wanted to claim that a virus you discovered caused AIDS, and if you were concerned about it failing Koch's Postulates – especially Three and Four, because it would not result in making a healthy chimpanzee sick – and you wanted to limit the people who tried to grow the AIDS virus to your personal friends who you could control a lot more easily than a whole profession of peers, what would be the easiest way to do that?”
No, Mr. Messick, you’re pushing me too far with that one. “I have no idea what you're talking about.”
“Oh, I think you do, Doctor. Let me put it this way…if your peers suddenly needed some very special culture – not the easily accessible HUT78 – to grow the virus, and they could only get it from you, wouldn't that pretty much limit who did the testing?”
“Yes, I suppose so.”
“Isn't it true, Dr. Pavlovich, that you didn't ‘mistakenly’ produce this new culture called H9 at all, but that you intentionally did so to create this very limited supply of the culture, and then helped spread the rumor that only the H9 culture would work to grow HIV?”
“Objection.”
“On what grounds?”
“Leading the witness.”
“Overruled. The witness may answer.”
No, Mr. Messick. I’m willing to give you Dr. Gallo’s head, but I’m not going to voluntarily incriminate myself any further. “It’s possible, I suppose.”
Messick looks down at his notes on the lectern and sees the big stars by Yamashuri’s name. Oh, yes. Don’t want to forget about this.
“Dr. Pavlovich, one of your lab workers was here to testify earlier, Mr. Yamashuri, and he told us about a report you originally wrote for Science Magazine in 1984 that said you had no trouble growing the virus in your lab, but that Dr. Gallo made you change that report before it went to print. Is that correct?”
“Yes, Mr. Messick, that’s public knowledge.”
Which I apparently missed completely, but okay. “Why would Dr. Gallo make you do that – make you lie in a scientific journal?”
“You can’t figure that out, Mr. Messick?”
“Help me out, Dr. Pavlovich.”
“Dr. Gallo wanted it to look like it was difficult to grow the virus.”
“Why?”
“For lots of reasons, actually.”
“Like?”
“Like it made it appear that he had done something in his lab that others wouldn’t be able to do without his expertise, for one thing.”
“Oh, so Dr. Gallo ordered you to alter your scientific paper to lie about growing the virus in your lab, and also to create this mysterious new culture called H9, which he limited access to, to make it sound like he had accomplished something extremely difficult that others should not even attempt to duplicate, so that very few of his peers would try to put his theories to the test – essentially, only those who he could control?”
“Yes, Mr. Messick.”
“Wasn't what you did completely unethical, Dr. Pavlovich, if not illegal?”
“It's easy in hindsight, isn't it, Mr. Messick?”
“I would have hoped it would have been easy in 1983, Dr. Pavlovich. Why did you do it? Why did you go along with Dr. Gallo's order?”
This is all too much, after all those years. Pavlovich bows his head, slumps his shoulders, and almost whispers his answer.
“I needed that job, Mr. Messick. I loved my work. I would have lost everything.”
“Are you saying that Dr. Gallo would have fired you if you didn't do what he said to create this fictitious culture called H9?”
“I was afraid, Mr. Messick.”
“Now that, I understand, Dr. Pavlovich.”
Messick almost feels sorry for Pavlovich. He goes to his table and picks up a magazine.
“Dr. Pavlovich, let me read you something. First of all, are you familiar with a Dr. Jay Levy?”
“Yes. Dr. Levy was working at that same time on AIDS research at the Cancer Research Institute at the University of California, San Francisco.”
“Let me read you something Dr. Levy said about Dr. Gallo....”
“Objection, this is hearsay.”
Crawley’s on his feet, looking very concerned, but Messick doesn’t hesitate to interrupt his objection.
“No, it's not, Your Honor. These remarks have been published and verified as belonging to Dr. Levy. I'm simply reading a public record for Dr. Pavlovich to solicit his comments.”
“Overruled. Continue, Mr. Messick.”
“Dr. Pavlovich, Dr. Levy said, and I quote, ‘Bob Gallo,’ referring to Dr. Robert Gallo…” and he points to the defense table, “…‘had incredible power. You can then see why he was so feared; nothing could touch him. He did whatever he wanted. Anyone that did him bad, you were out of the picture. He ran [his lab] like an autocrat, a tyrant – whatever you could call him. It was a dangerous situation for science; he controlled it all. And that's why he could do what he did and almost get away with it.’ Dr. Pavlovich, you worked for Dr. Gallo. Is that how you saw him as well?”
No sense trying to protect anyone any more, me or Gallo.
“Yes, I'd have to agree with Dr. Levy.”
“That's all the questions I have.”
Judge Watts throws a dirty look at Dr. Gallo and doesn’t even ask Crawley if he wants to cross-examine before banging her gavel. “We'll stand in recess until two p.m.”
Wrongful Death: The AIDS Trial Page 26
